Explanation of This Definition: 1. “Single Narrative Effect.”––Because of its succinctness, this sentence needs a little explanation. A narrative effect necessarily involves the three elements of action, characters, and setting. In aiming to produce a narrative effect, the short-story, therefore, differs from the sketch, which may concern itself with only one of these elements, without involving the other two. The sketch most often deals with character or setting divested of the element of action; but in the short-story something has to happen. In this regard, the short-story is related more closely to the novel than to the sketch. But although in the novel any two, or all three, of the narrative elements may be so intimately interrelated that no one of them stands out clearly from the others, it is almost always customary in the short-story to cast a marked preponderance of emphasis on one of the elements, to the subversion of the other two. Short-stories, therefore, may be divided into three classes, according as the effect which they purpose to produce is primarily an effect of action, or of character, or of setting. “The Masque of the Red Death” produces an effect of setting, “The Tell-Tale Heart” an effect of character, and “The Cask of Amontillado” an effect of action. For the sake of economy it is incumbent on the author to suggest at the outset which of the three sorts of narrative effect the story is intended to produce. The way in which Poe accomplished this in the three stories just mentioned may be seen at once upon examination of the opening paragraph of each. Having selected his effect the author of a short-story should confine his attention to producing that, and that alone. He should stop at the very moment when his preëstablished design has been attained; and never during the progress of his composition should he turn aside for the sake of a lesser effect not absolutely inherent in his single narrative 179 purpose. Stevenson insisted on this focus of attention in a passage of a personal letter addressed to Sir Sidney Colvin:––
“Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but that’s not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to follow; that’s what a story consists in. To make another end, that is to make the beginning all wrong. The dénouement of a long story is nothing, it is just ‘a full close,’ which you may approach and accomplish as you please––it is a coda, not an essential member in the rhythm; but the body and end of a short-story is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the beginning.”
2. “Greatest Economy of Means”; and 3. “Utmost Emphasis.”––The phrase “single narrative effect,” with all its implications, should now be clear. The phrase “with the greatest economy of means” implies that the writer of a short-story should tell his tale with the fewest necessary number of characters and incidents, and should project it in the narrowest possible range of place and time. If he can get along with two characters, he should not use three. If a single event will suffice for his effect, he should confine himself to that. If his story can pass in one place at one time, he must not disperse it over several times and places. But in striving always for the greatest possible conciseness, he must not neglect the equally important need of producing his effect “with the utmost emphasis.” If he can gain markedly in emphasis by violating the strictest possible economy, he should do so; for, as Poe stated, undue brevity is exceptionable, as well as undue length. Thus the parable of “The Prodigal Son,” which might be told with only two characters––the father and the prodigal––gains sufficiently in emphasis by the introduction of a third––the good 180 son––to warrant this violation of economy. The greatest structural problem of the writer of short-stories is to strike just the proper balance between the effort for economy of means––which tends to conciseness––and the effort for the utmost emphasis––which tends to amplitude of treatment.
Brief Tales That Are Not Short-Stories.––There can be no doubt that the short-story, thus rigidly defined, exists as a distinct form of fiction,––a definite literary species obeying laws of its own. Now and again before the nineteenth century, it appeared unconsciously. Since Poe, it has grown conscious of itself, and has been deliberately developed to perfection by later masters, like Guy de Maupassant. But it must be admitted frankly that brief tales have always existed, and still continue to exist, which stand entirely outside the scope of this rigid and rather narrow definition. Professor Baldwin, after a careful examination of the hundred tales in Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” concluded that only two of them were short-stories in the modern critical sense,[6] and that only three others approached the totality of impression that depends on conscious unity of form. If we should select at random a hundred brief tales from the best contemporary magazines, we should find, of course, that a larger proportion of them would fulfill the definition; but it is almost certain that the majority of them would still be stories that merely happen to be short, instead of true short-stories in the modern critical sense. Yet these brief fictions, which are not short-stories, and for which we have no name, are none the less estimable in content, and sometimes present a wider view of life than could be encompassed within the rigid limits of a technical short-story. Hawthorne’s tales stand higher in the history of 181 literature than Poe’s, because they reveal a deeper insight into life, even though the great New England dreamer often violates the principle of economy of means, and constructs less firmly than the mathematically-minded Poe. Washington Irving’s brief tales, such as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which are not short-stories in the technical sense of the term, are far more valuable as representations of humanity than many a structural masterpiece of Guy de Maupassant. “For my part,” Irving wrote to one of his friends, “I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch the materials; it is the play of thought, and sentiment, and language, the weaving in of characters, lightly yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing through the whole,––these are among what I aim at, and upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed.” There is much to be said in favor of this meandering and leisurely method; and authors too intent upon a merely technical accomplishment may lose the genial breadth of outlook upon life which men like Irving have so charmingly displayed. Let us admit, therefore, that the story-which-is-merely-short is just as worthy of cultivation as the technical short-story.
Short-Stories That Are Not Brief.––But if there exist many brief tales which are not short-stories, so also there exist certain short-stories which are not brief. “The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James, is a short-story, in the technical sense of the term, although it contains between two and three hundred pages. Assuredly it is not a novelette. It aims to produce one narrative effect, and only one; and it is difficult to imagine how the full force of its cumulative mystery and terror could have been created with greater economy of means. It is a 182 long short-story. Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which is conceived, and for the most part executed, as a short-story, is longer than the same author’s “The Beach of Falesá,” which is conceived and executed as a novelette. Edward Everett Hale’s famous short-story, “The Man Without a Country,” is long enough to be printed in a little volume by itself. The point to be remembered, therefore, is that the two different types of brief fiction are to be distinguished one from the other not by comparative length but by structural method. The critic may formulate the technical laws of the stricter type; but it must not be forgotten that these laws do not apply (and there is no reason whatever that they should) to those other estimable narratives which, though brief, stand outside the definition of the short-story.
Bliss Perry’s Annotations.––Bearing in mind this limitation of the subject, we may proceed to a further study of the strict short-story type. In an admirable essay on “The Short Story,”[7] Professor Bliss Perry had discussed at length its requirements and restrictions. Admitting that writers of short-stories usually cast a marked preponderance of emphasis on one of the three elements of narrative, to the subversion of the other two, Professor Perry calls attention to the fact that in the short-story of character, “the characters must be unique, original enough to catch the eye at once.” The writer does not have sufficient time at his disposal to reveal the full human significance of the commonplace. “If his theme is character-development, then that development must be hastened by striking experiences.” Hence this class of short-story, as compared with the novel, must set forth characters more unusual and unexpected. But in the short-story of action, on the other hand, the 183 plot may be sufficient unto itself, and the characters may be the merest lay figures. The heroine of “The Lady or the Tiger,” for example, is simply a woman––not any woman in particular; and the hero of “The Pit and the Pendulum” is simply a man––not any man in particular. The situation itself is sufficient to hold the reader’s interest for the brief space of the story. Hence, although, in the short-story of character, the leading actor is likely to be strikingly individualized, the short-story of action may content itself with entirely colorless characters, devoid of any personal traits whatever. Professor Perry adds that in the class of short-story which casts the main emphasis on setting, “both characters and action may be almost without significance”; and he continues,––“If the author can discover to us a new corner of the world, or sketch the familiar scene to our heart’s desire, or illumine one of the great human occupations, as war, or commerce, or industry, he has it in his power, through this means alone, to give us the fullest satisfaction.”
From the fact that the short-story does not keep the powers of the reader long upon the stretch, Professor Perry deduces certain opportunities afforded to short-story writers but denied to novelists,––opportunities, namely, “for innocent didacticism, for posing problems without answering them, for stating arbitrary premises, for omitting unlovely details and, conversely, for making beauty out of the horrible, and finally for poetic symbolism.” Passing on to a consideration of the demands which the short-story makes upon the writer, he asserts that, at its best, “it calls for visual imagination of a high order: the power to see the object; to penetrate to its essential nature; to select the one characteristic trait by which it may be represented.” Furthermore, it demands a mastery of style, “the verbal magic that recreates for 184 us what the imagination has seen.” But, on the other hand, “to write a short-story requires no sustained power of imagination”; “nor does the short-story demand of its author essential sanity, breadth, and tolerance of view.” Since he deals only with fleeting phases of existence––“not with wholes, but with fragments”––the writer of the short-story “need not be consistent; he need not think things through.” Hence, in spite of the technical difficulties which beset the author of short-stories, his work is, on human grounds, more easy than that of the novelist, who must be sane and consistent, and must be able to sustain a prolonged effort of interpretive imagination.
The Novelist and the Writer of Short-Stories.––These points have been so fully covered and so admirably illustrated by Professor Perry that they do not call for any further discussion in this place. But perhaps something may be added concerning the different equipments that are required by authors of novels and authors of short-stories. Matthew Arnold, in a well-known sonnet, spoke of Sophocles as a man “who saw life steadily and saw it whole”; and if we judge the novelist and the writer of short-stories by their attitudes toward life, we may say that they divide this verse between them. Balzac, George Eliot, and Meredith look at life in the large; they try to “see it whole” and to reproduce the chaos of its intricate relations: but Poe, de Maupassant, and Mr. Kipling aim rather to “see steadily” a limited phase of life, to focus their minds upon a single point of experience, and then to depict this point briefly and strikingly. It follows that the novelist requires an experience of life far more extensive than that which is required by the writer of short-stories. The great novelists have all been men of mature years and accumulated wisdom. But if an author knows one little point of life profoundly, he 185 may fashion a great short-story, even though that one thing be the only thing he knows. Of life as it is actually lived, of genuine humanity of character, of moral responsibility in human intercourse, Edgar Allan Poe knew nothing; and yet he was fully equipped to produce what remain until this day the most perfect examples of the short-story in our language. It is therefore not surprising that, although the great novels of the world have been written for the most part by men over forty years of age, the great short-stories have been written by men in their twenties and their thirties. Mr. Kipling wrote two or three short-stories which are almost great when he was only seventeen. Steadiness of vision is a quality of mind quite distinct from the ability to see things whole. “Plain Tales from the Hills” are in many ways the better stories for being the work of a lad of twenty: whatever Mr. Kipling saw at that very early age he envisaged steadily and expressed with the glorious triumphant strength of youth. But if at the same period he had attempted a novel, the world undoubtedly would have found out how very young he was. He would have been incapable of slicing a cross-section clean through the vastitude of human life, of seeing it whole, and of representing the appalling intricacy of its interrelations. On the other hand, most of the mature men who have been wise enough to do the latter, have shown themselves incapable of focussing their minds steadily upon a single point of experience. Wholeness and steadiness of vision––few are the men who, like Sophocles, have possessed them both. The same author, therefore, has almost never been able to write great short-stories and great novels. Scott wrote only one short-story,––“Wandering Willie’s Tale” in “Redgauntlet”; Dickens also wrote only one that is worthy of being considered a masterpiece of art,––“A Child’s Dream of a Star”; and Thackeray, 186 Cooper, George Eliot, and Meredith have written none at all. On the other hand, Poe could not possibly have written a novel; Guy de Maupassant shows himself less masterly in his more extended works; and Mr. Kipling has yet to prove that the novel is within his powers. Hawthorne is the one most notable example of the man who, beginning as a writer of short-stories, has developed in maturer years a mastery of the novel.
The Short-Story More Artistic Than the Novel.––Unlike the short-story, the novel aims to produce a series of effects,––a cumulative combination of the elements of narrative,––and acknowledges no restriction to economy of means. It follows that the novel, as a literary form, requires far less attention than the short-story to minute details of art. Great novels may be written by authors as careless as Scott, as lazy as Thackeray, or as cumbersome as George Eliot; for if a novelist gives us a criticism of life which is new and true, we forgive him if he fails in the nicer points of structure and style. But without these nicer points, the short-story is impossible. The economy of means that it demands can be conserved only by rigid restriction of structure; and the necessary emphasis can be produced only by perfection of style. The great masters of the short-story, like Poe and Hawthorne, Daudet and de Maupassant, have all been careful artists: they have not, like Thackeray, been slovenly in structure; they have not, like Scott, been regardless of style. The artistic instinct shows itself almost always at a very early age. If a man is destined to be an artist, he usually exhibits a surprising precocity of expression at a period when as yet he has very little to express. This is another reason why the short-story, as opposed to the novel, belongs to youth rather than to age. Though a young writer may be obliged to acknowledge inferiority to his elders in maturity of message, he may not infrequently 187 transcend them in fineness of technical accomplishment.
The Short-Story Almost Necessarily Romantic.––Another point that remains to be considered, before we relinquish this general discussion in order to devote our attention more particularly to a technical study of the structure of the short-story, is that, although the novel may be either realistic or romantic in general method, the short-story is almost of necessity obliged to be romantic. In the brief space allotted to him, it is practically impossible for the writer of short-stories to induce a general truth from particular imagined facts imitated from actuality: it is far simpler to deduce the imagined details of the story from a central thesis, held securely in the author’s mind and suggested to the reader at the outset. It is a quicker process to think from the truth to facts than to think from facts to the truth. Daudet and de Maupassant, who worked realistically in their novels, worked romantically in their contes; and the great short-stories of our own language have nearly all been written by romantic authors, like Poe, Hawthorne, Stevenson, and Mr. Kipling.